


Epiphany

by Aloice



Category: Final Fantasy XIII-2
Genre: Academia 400 AF, Gen, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-17
Packaged: 2018-12-16 12:38:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11828937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aloice/pseuds/Aloice
Summary: The Yeul of 400 AF loved to sing, yet she also loved a dead young man with silver-colored hair. Partially based on the Fragments After story "Intermezzo AF 400".





	Epiphany

For some reason, she’s always been entranced by the moon.

There is no true moon, not in this universe; only Cocoon, porcelain-polished and glacier-bright, an orb or a crescent depending on the night, clasped and guarded by the hymns of the Daughters of the Goddess. Cocoon is radiant, a pure, silvery glow not unlike the light of the Goddess she sees behind her eyes; yet Cocoon also does not belong – it does not shine on its own, only reflects, only held afloat and alive by two young girls that have fallen in love with its shell, and she laments its destiny, weaves its epiphanies into her own dreams.

 _If I could be the moon, I suppose Caius would be the eclipse_ , she muses, picking flowers to the tune of arias no one else could hear, _always trailing me, always enhancing that beauty even as he heralds the fear… the dark side of me, the unspoken chaos, the moon’s ability to block out the sun and let it all descend, all this built-up frustration and fear and desire…_

She tries to avoid mulling for too long over her own constitution and mortality – _it’s been too long, she no longer even weeps when she learns how she would die_ – but then her visions would direct her to that first vision again, of the young man standing beneath the pillar of the moon, eyes aglow with the light of the sun. He looks too similar to her for comfort – the same wintergreen eyes, the same lean build, the same flowing hair that shimmers blue and silver in turns – to the point where she wonders if he’s family or if she had seen him from another life, but the strength and resolve in his face and hands are unquestionably his own, and he never falters, not even once.

 _You are lonely_ , she whispers, noting the barely imperceptible trembling of his lips and the quiet sorrow above the silver brows, _you can’t thaw the moon out. But why do you still gaze upon it with the belief that you can change it all, you who’s been blessed and cursed by the Goddess in one singular call… why do you cling thus onto life? Why do you cling thus onto hope? Where did you find your light, and how are you holding it within your soul?_

He lifts his face. Trusts so much that it makes her heart ache. “We will meet in the future, for sure,” he speaks to the invisible figures within the pillar, sweeps it all up. His words become humanity’s prayer, and then the truth. His brilliance showers the ground beneath him, iridescent; he swells with the power of it.

She watches him walk away, mesmerized – and loves him despite knowing it will never come to pass.

“Do you believe that you can escape this Fate, Yeul?” Caius asks, worried-indignant-mournful, and she smiles as she stretches up on her toes to reach for him, eagerly inhaling his musky scent as he pulls her into his arms. There’s a singular tear in her eye. Caius must believe that she has finally again cracked at the vision of her own death, yet her pain dwells, unknown to him, deep within a backlit labyrinth built many centuries in the past. _He_ sleeps there, crumpled and still and unbreathing; his requiem had been the never-ending blasts of security sirens, yet the aubade of the sun’s heart had remained within him, untainted and not yet fully extinguished. It is not the end of the journey for him.

Yet it will be the end of this world for the two of them.

“You are leaving me, are you not, Caius?”

Caius’ expression is unreadable as he sets her down onto the damp earth. “Would you forgive me for wanting to save you?”

She remembers what she’s seen of her own death, of the night in the city of chaos and silence, and her lips curl up wanly. She peers into her guardian’s eyes; his eyes are midnight blue, a maelstrom. This Yeul has made her peace with being alone.

“Why are you trying to save the moon,” she asks – _he deserves a grave, he deserves a world with a true moon and a sun that will never go down, he deserves more than a dozen ballads and songs_ – “when the sun has been erased from the sky?”

He doesn’t answer. She doesn’t expect him to. When she wakes the next morning, Caius is gone, and she packs her bags for a trip only she can take.

 

The rain pours endlessly; she stumbles at the alien lights, the vicious assault of violent colors and screeching wings, crimson Cie’th eyes where children’s hearts had been – and she wonders if this is what he had felt when he had met his own end, so many years before her own: if bewilderment and acceptance are universal, and courage is the award for devoting yourself wholeheartedly to your light, I-will-make-this-world-live-above-all-the-bodies-of-me-that-have-come-before. Even now, she is reflecting his light; she is running, arms open, towards an end that she knows will cycle into a world with joy, and she will not back down, not when she can already almost hear that future’s birdsong. _And songs for me, songs for him, songs for all of us…_

Another boy with eyes the hue of the sun embraces her as she falls, wipes her features clean of rain and saltwater. She sleeps in the warmth of human empathy and love even if it has not come from the one she craves. _I hope I will see you someday_ , she implores to the Goddess and the chaos even as her soul melts again into their hold, _I hope I will see you live_ – and an artefact materializes where her demise had been, to show the world the way.

 

_I will chase after_

_the wounded sky of you,_

_boundless sunshine_

_and dissipating smoke._

**Author's Note:**

> I've always been intrigued by this Yeul ever since I learned of her story, and then I realized one of my dragons (Epiphany) on Flight Rising could be the perfect Yeul (an orca/midnight/smoke imperial girl with green eyes... and a moon-themed skin with the white falling feathers of Etro). So here we are with this drabble. Special thanks to cartoonmoomba again for writing such a beautiful Yeul and being an inspiration for all Hope or Yeul related works ever.


End file.
